There’s More Compute Than We Think
With the rapid growth of artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, and Web3 technologies, global demand for scalable, efficient, and cost-effective computational power has surged dramatically.
According to McKinsey’s 2024 Digital Infrastructure Report, nearly 58% of global computing devices (including PCs, laptops, mobile devices, and servers) remain underutilized for most of the day. Meanwhile, AI inference workloads have increased by more than 300% over the past two years, driven by models such as ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, and the Llama series. Model serving has become a critical bottleneck for developers and enterprises alike.
In addition, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that data centers and high-performance computing servers accounted for 2.4% of global electricity usage in 2023, with this share continuing to grow. Rising energy costs and environmental concerns are putting pressure on traditional computing infrastructure.
At the same time, the cost of computation in Web3 remains high. On Ethereum, average gas prices for transaction validation remain between 20 and 80 Gwei, pushing many compute-heavy tasks off-chain.
These issues reflect three structural challenges:
Severe underutilization of distributed edge devices
High operational and environmental costs from centralized compute infrastructure
Lack of flexible and economically viable computing supply for AI and Web3 applications
There is a clear need for a decentralized, low-barrier, high-utilization compute solution that repurposes idle resources and provides infrastructure for emerging digital ecosystems.
This is exactly the gap TechTide aims to address.